April 13, 2024, Subotica– To ensure the forests in local communities remain places where citizens can spend a quality time and breathe clean air for a long time, the organization CEKOR implementing the initiative “Towards a flood- and drought-resistant Serbia” with the support of the European Union, joined the action “The Big Spring Cleaning” in the Hajdukovac forest near Subotica.
Around 50 volunteers participated in the action. Throughout the day, they managed to gather and remove about 10 tons of trash from this location, thus demonstrating their love for nature in practice. The representatives of Public Company “Vojvodinasume” and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) joined the action.
Vojvodina has shortage of about 170,000 hectares of new forests and protective plantation. Damages and loses in agriculture and other sectors due to floods, droughts, reduction in yield and the quality of soil, and other direct consequences of the lack of forests, are measured in billions of euros. The cleaning action highlights the importance of preserving and caring for existing forests and forest land in the Subotica area. Without forests, it is impossible to imagine the risk reduction from droughts and floods. Forests are especially important in areas with dominant agriculture, where there is more wind erosion and loss of fertile soil, as well as an increased risk of climate extremes and pollution.
The importance of forests is multiple – to prevent floods and to protect soil, settlements and infrastructure from erosion and landslides. It is worrying that erosion, as one of the main factors of flood occurrence, affects 75% of Serbia's territory, with an annual average production of erosion material of 30 million m3. A large part of this debris ends up in rivers, which results in huge amounts of mud and stone in flooded areas.
Erosion and flood prevention activities contribute to strengthening the protection of population and assets, but also the improvement of the environment cause of their positive effect on the stability of forest ecosystems and the quality of soil and water. By advocating preventive activities and organizing field actions, we contribute to the preservation of biodiversity, the mitigation of climate change effects, and the promotion of activism in this field.
CEKOR conducted the cleaning of the Hajdukovac forest as one of the activities within the project “EU for Serbia Resilient to Disasters”, supported by the European Union and implemented by UNDP.